


this time, they both remember

by Macklestuff



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Modern Life, Post-Canon, Reincarnation, Slice of Life, attempted suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-14
Updated: 2016-01-14
Packaged: 2018-05-13 22:05:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5718781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macklestuff/pseuds/Macklestuff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of stories, each representing a distinct iteration of Eren's and Levi's lives. In some of them, Levi is the only one who remembers, and in others, Eren is the one who carries the weight of their memories. Sometimes, they both remember.</p><p>Tags and warnings will be added along with new chapters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this time, they both remember

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys,
> 
> I hope you enjoy this little piece. There are more notes in the end of the chapter, because I don't want to spoil anything. 
> 
> Just take note that I did this quickly before going to bed in the middle of finals' period, because I really wanted to write this and publish it as soon as I got the idea. If there are any typos, I sincerely apologize!
> 
> However, I hope all is good and you enjoy this chapter. All my love!

This time, Levi remembers. 

The summer breeze glided across his skin, laying its gentle caresses on his face, reminding Levi of an even lovelier touch. The grass under his body was slightly damp, which had initially caused him discomfort, but now he laid there, his limbs spread in rare carelessness. His shirt’s collar was loose, his palms open and facing the sky. There’s no part of his body that aches, currently or in a ghostly manner, as he remembers his leg used to in a previous existence, one that feels immensely far to him.

Yet, the boy with green eyes feels immensely close. 

Levi shudders at the thought of those eyes, his lips parting slightly as he recalls their first kiss. It was tentative, in a dark place full of doubt and anxiety. But the kiss itself had been so beautiful, forcing Levi’s world into a violent jerk, as Eren pulled him in and took more of him than Levi thought he could ever give away. Their lips had explored each other’s relentlessly, and when they were finally done, breathless and shaking, Eren confessed to him, and despite Levi already knowing and reciprocating, the words were forever burned into his mind, etching themselves into the essence of his existence.

He figured that Eren’s tongue had carved those words so deeply into his soul, that they are the reason why he is remembering now, a hundred or so years later, lying in a green hill far, far away from the ruins that stood where the walls had then been. His heart ached slightly, wondering if he should go back, if he should try to find Eren there. 

But he never did, not knowing if Eren also remembered, or where he even was. It was more fulfilling to live forever with his mind occupied in another realm, not caring about his own current life, as he was more concerned to imagine Eren in his arms in some hole of a camp surrounded by carnivorous giants than to ever fraternize with the actual people who surrounded him now. 

He had a mother who had given birth to him when she was too young, so she was away, going on with her life. His grandparents, a kind, but tired elderly couple, raised him with more love than he had ever felt in all of his previous life (except for Eren, whose love was unique, and could not be described in terms of kindness or compassion, but rather in terms of lifelines, desperation, need, like trying to describe the need to breathe). 

When Levi became more aware of these emotions, of the things he had felt for Eren, and allowed them to monopolize his mind and his life from that day on, he was seventeen.

Years passed. He passed them mostly in quiet seclusion, content to exist elsewhere, in a realm where Eren had been his. Other people tried connecting to him, unsuccessfully. His grandparents passed, his mother was nowhere to be found but he did not hold it against the woman. She had the right to live in another world, one where he didn’t exist, just like he had the right to live in a world where no one but Eren existed. 

Levi oftentimes suspected he was sick to his core, mentally ill, perpetually miserable. He had these thoughts when he caught himself failing to get out of his mental trance for days on end, neglecting to even eat. The area where he lived was becoming increasingly urban as the population expanded, and he found less of a desire to ever go outside, now that so many more people lived around him, and sometimes he would forget he had to tend to his body. So a part of him was aware of how sick he was, how possibly delirious his entire mindset was, how much of it could be just him lying to himself, fucking his only life over. Levi had always felt a certain familiarity with death, feeling its presence even in his twenties, also knowing that he did not care about his deliriousness, his morbidity. 

He loved Eren so much, this tangibly inexistent piece of his mind, loved him endlessly, passionately, desperately, and felt so content and sated in his delirium. The real world could never provide the happiness he felt in getting lost in those fiery memories, so many that he had stored in corners of his mind, endlessly discovering details that he had previously failed to recall. The way Eren’s neck smelled so much like him, warm and overbearing, sweet to an extent. The way that Eren’s fingers played with Levi’s fingers when they were alone and bored. The way Eren would hungrily stare at him when he thought Levi wasn’t noticing him, much before Eren had worked up the courage to kiss him. Fuck. The real world could never be so sweet. The whole world was a fucking joke compared to how real Eren felt in his mind. 

But sometimes, when he sick, when he is inexplicably tired, or simply when he was bored, he wanted to die. Maybe in death, maybe in another life, he could finally touch what lived so vividly only within the confines of his head. He really wanted to do it, having once bought one of those new personal handguns, which had become cheap and accessible after someone invented a way to have them mass-produced through making universal parts instead of unique, entire guns. So he grabbed that mass-produced little gun in the privacy of his bathroom, and pushed the muzzle into his mouth. 

The image of a crying Eren, finding him broken and torn, bloomed like an open wound into his mind. Eren screaming for help, holding a shaking hand to his bleeding chest. Everything became blurry afterwards, but his ears captured those final moments through Eren’s words, reminding him of how much he loved him, begging Levi to stay, to please see the ocean with him someday, to marry him, to take him. 

And then he died, Levi thinks. He doesn’t know for sure, but there’s nothing after that. 

Maybe that’s why he remembers that previous life, because he never got to tell Eren how much he loved him. They never had sex. Levi never told Eren how he was convinced that the sole reason he was born was to meet Eren, to savor and cherish the other like he didn’t know he could ever cherish anything, even his own life. But he never did. Never will. The muzzle was still in his mouth, waiting patiently for him to make up his mind, and he pressed his finger to the trigger.

Eren screaming, screaming. 

Levi felt like throwing up, the muzzle having triggered a gag reflex for how far he had been pushing it. Levi removed the gun from his mouth, crawled pathetically to the toilet to empty his stomach of water and acid. He should eat something. Maybe get groceries, for once. He showered, brushed his teeth to get the taste of bile and metal out of his mouth. Then he dressed, putting on the white shirt he was fondest of, and made his way to the door. 

\- 

Levi learns how to cook. He buys several books, finding pleasure in their beautiful drawings and overall minimalist designs. Art has become a pressing matter in this new, freer society, which concerns itself with things like “humanities,” an unessentially branch of academia from which deeper meanings and human exploration emerges from. Levi falls in love with things like cooking books and typography, buys a new and expensive typewriter with the small inheritance that his grandparents left. He begins to sell minimal, cryptic poetry, which other people call “dark and compelling” and “far-fetched and yet beautiful” and “slightly surreal, and deathly” in newspapers that get delivered to his front door every morning. 

That’s how he learns to live life, through one cooking book to the next, selling poetry until he gets a contract of sorts with a publisher whose name he doesn’t usually recall very easily, and they fortunately begin to do all the selling for him, so Levi only has time to write and cook and take long showers. Sometimes, he wishes he could practice the fine art of killing a beast, of overpowering something or someone larger than him, and he knows he is deathly, it runs through his veins, sometimes boiling in them. But he is content enough, he figures. There’s no need to satisfy his bloodlust when he can instead peacefully dream about Eren at night. 

Such is his life at thirty-five—the age he died in his previous life, he thinks, but isn’t entirely sure.

Not that it matters a lot, he also guesses. 

His editor is supposed to come in that morning, carrying a stack of freshly printed limited-edition copies for signing—which he thinks is fucking ridiculous, that people would pay more for his stupid scrabbling. But he accedes because he’s not impulsively confrontational in this life, and he wants a new typewriter anyway. 

When he hears a knock in his door, Levi wipes his hands off on his faded apron, ridding his fingers of small stains of purple from the berries he had just been cleaning. 

He opens the door to reveal a short, balding man, who grins at him and hands him a box full of books. 

Levi mumbles out something between “This is really unnecessary” and “Thanks I guess” but then fails to close the door when the man leaves. 

The box is heavy in his arms, blocking his view and not helping him maneuver back into his apartment. 

“Can I help?” 

Shit, who was that? It wasn’t his editor. Hopefully they don’t actually want to help him, and they are just being superficially and annoyingly polite. 

Levi peeks from the side of box, trying to see who is bothering him, and is met with the familiar glint of emerald eyes pleadingly looking into his. 

The box drops to his feet. It thumps loudly and unforgivingly.

Eren is apologizing then, kneeling to pick up the box, and easily hauls it up into his arms. 

\- 

Levi is still shaking slightly; his fingers keep twitching. They are sitting inside his living room, next to each other, Eren awkwardly trying to decide whether to talk to him, whether to touch him. Levi knows Eren wants to, with that desperate puppy look he is giving him, begging Levi to talk to him with his big green eyes. 

Levi is terrified that the person who has lived so vividly inside his head is now sitting next to him. He feels a soft dampness in his cheeks, and his chest heaves unevenly. All he can see is Eren crying for him, begging him to stay with him. Levi’s shoulders are shaking, his eyes are fucking stinging. And the real, tangible Eren is now kneeling in front of him with his knees on the ground, grabbing his shoulders, smiling but still also crying. They are both crying, Levi thinks. But Eren is talking. 

“Levi, I’m so happy to see you.”

“Please talk to me.”

“How much do you remember?”

“Levi, please.”

But Levi is just silent, and doesn’t know if this is the most cruel dream he’s ever had, the culmination of his delusion, or if he’s finally died. 

“Levi.”

He doesn’t remember ever telling Eren he loved him. That brings a sob out of him, and maybe that’s a hundred times more of a confession in itself than he ever gave to Eren when they were both alive in their previous life. How can Eren even be near him right now, when he’s so obviously shattering, because he never prepared for this? 

Eren is kissing him, he realizes. And snaps out of it. 

His arms wrap around Eren, pulling him close, and they both get pulled by both gravity and desire into the couch. Eren is on top of him, straddling him as his tongue forces its way between Levi’s lips, and Levi just moans into the mouth that is eagerly bruising his own. His legs wrap around Eren’s waist, pulling him closer, while the green eyed man is staring into his eyes, eating his existence in those emerald depths, and then kisses him even harder, deeper. They are both still crying, tears mingling with each other, reaching their lips and making their kiss salty, but that doesn’t mean Eren stops. Eren doesn’t stop for anything when it comes to Levi. 

-

They end up in Levi’s bed, their limbs tangled together. They have calmed down, and their tears have dried on their cheeks. But they are still desperate to feel each other, so Eren keeps pressing his hands and Levi’s together, and Levi keeps their foreheads together. 

“I’m so sorry I didn’t come sooner. I should have. I wanted to see you so much, I thought I would die from how lovesick I was. But I didn’t know if you remembered me. Your poems made me realize that you did remember us.” 

Levi can’t answer him, but his eyes look at Eren’s in a silent form of forgiveness. It doesn’t matter now, they are together and they have all the time in the world. 

“I love you so much, Levi. I always have. It’s like I was born already loving you, and it just took me some time to remember all the details. But I have always needed you so much. I was so empty without you.”

“… You brat.” 

That brings a bright smile out of Eren, which in turn tugs at Levi’s heart. 

“I love you, Eren.”

That’s more than he ever told the other in their previous life. It feels like an immense wave of happiness had just hit his insides and filled him in a way he didn’t know his life could feel full. If happiness felt explicitly like anything, it was this. It was then Eren’s turn to break under the weight of happiness, too, and the green eyed man he cherished with all his heart, this overgrown and impossibly beautiful twenty-year-old, shook and let out something between a cry and a laugh, and they were kissing again, taking each other in, never wanting to ever, ever let go again.

**Author's Note:**

> So I really hope everyone enjoyed it. It's subtle and slow, and dwells inside of Levi's head a lot. All chapters won't be like this, but I thought this was a good introduction to a series that will be mainly based on these characters' reincarnations. 
> 
> Other chapters will be a lot more action-packed, I promise!
> 
> Also, a hint for the next one: Only one of them remembers. 
> 
> And, lastly, please, please, leave me feedback! Constructive criticism is greatly, greatly appreciated (I'm an arts major, so I'm used to being torn down and built back up!). Also, general encouragement makes my day.
> 
> So please comment!
> 
> And see you in the next round.


End file.
